


Real Bad

by schizoauthoress



Series: Peaksville Tales [2]
Category: Twilight Zone
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Non-Con (with Anthony's wife), Isolation, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 14:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12706845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schizoauthoress/pseuds/schizoauthoress
Summary: Anthony Fremont and his daughter, Audrey, are all alone in Peaksville. Anthony has plenty of time alone with his thoughts.





	Real Bad

**Author's Note:**

> Eileen is the name of Bill Mumy's real-life wife. (Bill Mumy is, as you may know, the actor who portrayed Anthony in both episodes.) I borrowed it for the name of Anthony's wife.

Peaksville is real quiet these days. It's just me, and my daughter Audrey. Everyone else we know has been sent away to the cornfield.

Even I don't really remember why I started calling it 'the cornfield'. It's not. It's another place, outside of what's real. And when I send things to the cornfield, I can't bring them back. 

Except... I wasn't the one who sent them away. It wasn't my choice, but Audrey's. She has powers like mine.

I can do lots of things -- more than just send them away, more than just look into people and feel what they feel. I can reach into them and make them hurt. I can go into their heads and make them do things, whether they really want to or not. (That's easier with animals, because animals can't figure out that they should fight it off, while people will do nothing but.) I can make things happen just by wishing for it -- changing the shape of things or people, make it snow or rain or the sun to shine, set things on fire just by wanting them to be on fire.

Audrey, too, can shape the world the way she pleases. I didn't know at first. Unlike the other people who used to live in Peaksville, Audrey can keep me out of her head. If I try to look into her head, I'll only see what she wants me to see. She's stronger than me.

I wonder if Dad ever felt this way, looking at me. Maybe he did... but he couldn't allow himself to feel it for too long. I wouldn't have liked to know about it, when I was younger and Dad was still around. 

I can't stop the question from forming in my head -- does Audrey know that I'm afraid of her?

Audrey looks up at me. Just as before, knowing that she could send me away if she pleases, I feel a jolt of terror. But, like the people who used to live in Peaksville, I force it down. I don't want her to know. I put extra effort into my next thoughts:

'It's all okay. It's fine. It's just me and Audrey, and that's good. It's real good.'

Audrey smiles.

****

Grow the wheat, grind the flour, make the bread, feed my child. That will turn into my central concern, once we eat our way through the supplies that remain. I have to think ahead, and prepare for that. And I can't upset her into sending me away, because she doesn't know yet how to take care of herself.

I've never had to work for our food, but I've looked into enough farmers' minds to know what needs to be done. And I have advantages they didn’t -- I'm able to coax the seeds to grow.

I can't force things to grow especially quickly -- they die too fast that way, and any crop I get off the plants is too small and bitter. Gentle nudges work much better. Especially with grain crops... I lost so much wheat trying to force it to grow. The idea that I wouldn't be able to feed Audrey or myself -- that no matter what I did, nature was against our survival -- was awful. 

I'd felt that fear before, through the filter of it belonging to others. But now, finally, I understood it. I'd never been responsible for our food in this way. Though I knew the steps from 'listening in' to the thoughts of the community, it hadn't been that important to me. Now it was the most important thing in our tiny world. 

It didn't have to be this hard. I recalled, vaguely, that we'd had modern conveniences, people to trade with and places to go, before I isolated Peaksville as a child. It was so long ago that I'm no longer certain if I'd taken Peaksville away from the world, or if I'd wiped out the world surrounding us. Did I have that much power?

The question doesn't particularly matter. Because however much power I have, I don't have the power to fix it. We're stuck, Audrey and I, in this twilight existence until we die. 

She's watching me, as I bring in a meager successful crop, the first after so many weeks and weeks of trying. Has she been 'listening in'? I hope not -- a child shouldn't know the worries and fears of an adult so clearly.

I did. And I couldn't understand any of it, because I came to it too soon. It caused me -- all of us in Peaksville -- nothing but pain and confusion, to have a child privy to the complex and circular worries of adults. If I can shield her from anything, let me shield her from that.

****

It's so lonely.

I never realized before how much comfort I took in the presence of other people. Yes, the background noise of their thoughts could sometimes be intrusive or bothersome, but the complete lack of it is so strange to me.

If Audrey wants to be alone, if she chooses to shield her mind from mine, the only thing I can hear in Peaksville are the thoughts of the animals. It's something, but it's almost worse than nothing. The animals are alive and have their own simple concerns of survival... concerns that mirror my own, sometimes. If I have only them to listen to, if Audrey continues to shut me out, what's to say that I won't forget what it is to be a person?

But then I think back, to all the people I knew, and all the ways that I hurt them. I got no pleasure from their suffering, but neither did I care much when they were gone. Until they were all gone. 

Have I ever known what it is to be a person?

I always hurt people when I interfered, even when I was trying to help. And I was worse when I interfered with them based on things I wanted, rather than what they wanted.

I looked inside them and I saw love and caring for each other, and I wanted that for myself. When I got older, I noticed Eileen and how she wasn't afraid of me, not as much as the others. I wanted her to love and care for me. I didn't even concern myself with worries if that was what she wanted, not really. Not when it was easier to peek into her mind and nudge her thoughts toward loving me.

That's not something other people can do. I should have let her choose, one way or the other, rather than cutting off any doubts she had. I did love Eileen, I'm sure of it -- and I love Audrey, the daughter we had together -- but I'm not so sure she would have loved me if I hadn't... interfered.

Maybe I am a monster. Maybe the world at large -- if it still exists -- is better off without me. Better off with me exiled to this empty village. I only wish I could send Audrey out of it, without worrying that she'd end up dead in the cornfield. She deserves a better chance at life than this.

I feel Audrey looking for me, reaching out with her mind. She's bored or hungry, probably. I walk back to our house quickly, just grateful that she's in the mood to speak to me again.

****

When I get back to the house, Audrey acts as though nothing has changed, and I smile back at her as best I can. I don't understand it. She was so upset before, when George's boy stopped coming over. (That's my fault, too... I'd tried to keep from hurting Timmy and dealt the punishment to George instead, but only frightened Timmy into staying away.)

We eat lunch and she asks me to play the piano for her afterward. Neither of us can stand singing, but musical instruments sound real good. I do my best to oblige her, even though I honestly don't feel up to playing anything.

Eventually, I can't keep up the charade, and stop using my powers to press the piano keys. Silence fills the sitting room, same as the silence beyond the house, same as the silence in the fields. All silence, unbroken by human voices.

Audrey asks, "What's wrong, Daddy?"

I am afraid of telling her this, and hope she'll take it the right way. I love my daughter, and she makes me happy, but...

I sigh. "I don't know. Just a little lonely, I guess."

"I bet I know what would cheer you up," Audrey declares.

"What would that be?" I ask, expecting some childish diversion. But her eyes get wide, and the darkness of her pupils seems to shift from black to purple. She uses her powers so rarely -- it's always strange for me to remember that she can.

And a sound fills the air. A distant, mechanical rumble. I turn for the front door, confused. Something about the noise is familiar, but I can't place it. I get up from the piano bench and walk for the outside.

There's something in the sky. I narrow my eyes and peer at the unfamiliar shape. It takes a moment for the name to come to me, and when it does, I gasp. "An airplane!"

"I brought it all back so you won't be lonely anymore!" Audrey says cheerfully.

"What, you...?" I can barely form the words. I stoop a little and put a hand on her shoulder, nudging at her to meet my eyes. She does so, and I manage to ask, "You brought what back?"

"Everything!" she answers. "All the different countries, the cities! You think we could visit New York?"

The enormity of what she's saying... of what she's managed to do... seems to escape her. She's done what I can't. What if she truly has no limits to her abilities?

"New York is a big place," I tell her, as I straighten up again. "Lots of people."

"Yeah, and they better be nice to us," Audrey says blithely, "or you know what we'll do to them!"

She doesn't regret anything that she's done, does she? Wiping out our neighbors, her own grandmother... and I'm afraid to reach out and discover if they're among the 'everything' she returned to existence. If that's what she's done, if she hasn't just slotted Peaksville -- sans most of its residents, save us two -- back into the reality I plucked it out of forty years ago. But how can she feel regret when I, her main example, have never shown any?

She's got the whole world to twist to her whims, where I was content with one small town. And if she decides to hurt or control people, I won't be able to stop her. She doesn't know it's wrong. I never told her -- worse, never showed her -- that it was wrong to hurt people. I wanted to help them, and I still hurt them. I don't know what Audrey wants to do.

It’s bad what I’ve done. It’s real bad.

*-*-*-*-*


End file.
